Drew Angerer/GettyDespite police crackdowns, curfews, boiling heat, rain, and fears of a global pandemic that continues to plague America, huge crowds of protesters swelled to their largest size yet on Saturday in some of the country's biggest cities.

On the eleventh day of protests—sparked by the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police—tens of thousands of demonstrators descended on Union Park in Chicago, downtown Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Brooklyn, and Washington, D.C., where huge gatherings took on a festival-like air.

It provided a jarring contrast to footage of hundreds of police officers cheering outside a Buffalo, NY, courthouse on Saturday, in support of two colleagues who were charged with second-degree assault for shoving a 75-year-old protester to the ground.